Chapter 144: Main Beam

I had no time to look closely; I hurriedly summoned Pangzi and Shirley Yang to flee this place, for the bronze cauldron might contain fire nitrate and its lid would trigger at the slightest move. This was meant for Prince Xian to burn on the Que Terrace during the heavenly sacrifice, but it ignited inside the hall and the fire grew large. The main body of the 'Soaring Clouds Heavenly Palace' is nanmu wood plus brick‑tile construction, built on the 'Dragon Halo', very dry. From the moment the six‑legged black cauldron was lit until now this brief while, the hall's wood has been scorched by the hot flow, making crackling sounds; it seems the heavenly palace is about to become a fire palace.

There were still four or five fierce Zombie Persons in the hall; Pangzi and Shirley Yang were fighting them, circling the stone stele in the corner, when the sudden huge firelight startled them, they turned pale at once and rushed behind me, sprinting toward the short corridor linking the front hall; if they lingered another moment they'd likely become roasted meat.

How could I know that before even stepping out of the rear hall, the ceiling of that short corridor suddenly collapsed like a cave‑in, booming down and sealing the exit tightly; I didn't know whether to feel relieved or to complain—if we had been a few steps faster we would surely have been crushed by that ten‑thousand‑jin massive rock into a pulp in the corridor, but now we remain trapped in the rear hall with no way out, and soon we will also be burned to death by fire.

With our current equipment, trying to extinguish that fire is nothing short of a fool's dream; the hall's heat wave hits us, I feel my eyebrows about to be singed by the blaze, Pangzi panics and spins around, I grab him and say to Pangzi and Shirley Yang: 'Don't panic at all, first use the water in the kettle to wet your hair.'

Pangzi said: 'That would be looking after the head but neglecting the rear; besides, this bit of water is utterly useless… what is this thing?'

While Pangzi was speaking, suddenly we heard a loud boom from the hall's wall; we hurriedly turned and saw a large hole broken in the wall, the mercury dragon whose one end was driven into the 'Prince Xian's Ascension‑to‑Heaven Pavilion' in the front hall had actually thrust its head through the rear hall's partition.

The dragon head protruding from the rear hall immediately spewed a large amount of mercury from its mouth; the floor instantly became splattered with large and small globules. I was anxious as if fire were rushing to the beam gate, and I hurriedly told Pangzi and Shirley Yang: 'The hall door is blocked; above is a roof of nanmu dragon beams and glazed tiles—let's quickly climb onto the stone stele and blast an exit through the roof from above.'

Pangzi also forgot his fear of heights, he pointed to the stone stele in the corner and said: 'Only this stele is the highest; let's quickly build a human ladder and climb up, hurry, hurry, or we'll end up with a mother‑lode of mercury poisoning from all those funerary objects.' Having said that, he rushed over; I and Shirley Yang dared not linger, we dodged the mercury underfoot and rushed to the tall stone stele at the hall's corner, where the three of us erected a human ladder and climbed the stele.

Bending down to look, the flowing mercury was already over half a meter deep and still rapidly increasing; the flames of the six‑legged black cauldron burning in the hall had dimmed. Firelight reflected on the floor as countless flowing ripples, making the hall's light and shadow shift constantly, very beautiful yet with an eerie intensity.

Because Zombie Persons control the contraction of their tracheal system via muscle movement of their mouthparts to help oxygen diffuse into tissue cells, and they rely heavily on oxygen concentration. Now, due to the intense burning of the fire, the air in the hall has become much thinner than normal, so the remaining few Zombie Persons have collapsed on the ground, writhing, half‑buried in mercury; seeing their desperate struggle, it looks like we need not lift a finger—they won't survive much longer.

The large amount of mercury in the hall, heated by the fire, gave off a pungent hot‑metal smell, the odor extremely unpleasant and containing some toxins; fortunately it is not lethal in the short term. As soon as Pangzi got onto the wooden beam, I did not dare delay, quickly clipped onto the climbing rope and used a pulley to pull myself up.

As soon as I got onto the wooden beam I remembered the shaman's robe hanging from the hall's ceiling; looking back from the main beam, that big red women's shaman's robe was silently hanging from a crossbeam behind me, less than a meter away; in the reflected flowing light it seemed the robe had come to life, swaying slightly.

Just now Shirley Yang said this resembled the robe worn by a 'female shaman' among the Yi people; I had never seen such attire before, but I know that if it were connected to Prince Xian's sacrificial rites it would certainly bear an eye‑symbol, whereas this red robe has no eye decoration; if it is indeed a shaman's robe, it must belong to an important figure among the Yi people slaughtered by Prince Xian.

Like the other empty garments hanging in the hall, their corpses are all in the six‑legged fire cauldron, boiled down to grease; ancient tradition holds that those who die wearing red clothing, if they die at a yin year, yin month, yin hour, become fierce ghosts, for red is yang while time is yin, so such fierce ghosts hardly have any weakness in darkness and are extremely hard to deal with; therefore, when encountering fully yin moments or even the half‑yin minor cycle, the deceased's relatives often dress them in white funeral clothes and dare not touch red, this being the precaution against their turning into fierce ghosts.

At this moment we three were all on the great beam suspended above the hall's cauldron; below, the mercury kept increasing, the hall's wood had just been scorched by the fierce fire, and though the fire is now out, it still expands from heat, emitting creaks and the sound of wood joints splitting apart; on this makeshift bridge that could snap at any moment, we all simultaneously thought: isn't there a human head on that shaman's robe?

Just now we were only focused on dodging the mercury below and the fierce fire, while also sparring with a batch of fierce Zombie Persons; every minute and second was a life‑or‑death urgency, we had been rushing upward to escape, so we temporarily forgot about the woman's head that had emitted a deep, cold laugh; now I recall that the upper part of this shaman's robe was wrapped around something.

I wanted to confirm again, to see whether there was a corpse inside that red robe, but alas the hall's firelight had gone out and the spaces between the beams on the roof had turned into a pitch‑black expanse; sets of strange clothes hung empty in mid‑air, illuminated by the headlamp on my helmet, they looked even more shadowy and vague, like a myriad of soul‑reaping thousand‑year ghosts wandering the hall's roof.

The closest is that set of blood‑bright vivid women's shaman's robe; looking at its outline in the darkness, there is indeed something in the upper body, but the head is blocked by a short beam, invisible from the main beam where we are.

So I gestured to Pangzi and Shirley Yang behind me, telling them to stay still for now; before the mercury fills the rear hall, there is still a bit of spare time, I will go across the wooden beam to the nearest distance and have a look to see whether the fierce ghost of the Yi people's female shaman is attached to that shaman's robe.

A 'female shaman' is a woman who, by taking drugs, can enter a state of extreme mental frenzy and communicate with the gods. Although called 'female shaman', she is not necessarily an elderly woman; she could also be young. Such shamans hold an extremely high status among the Yi people, wielding all authority in the name of the gods.

I asked Pangzi for his ice axe, glanced at the mercury on the floor, held my breath, and on the wooden beam crept closer to that shaman's robe until I could just see her head. It was a bloody woman's head, the face covered by disheveled hair, only a narrow slit visible in the middle, the head drooping downward, utterly still.

I can't figure out how that gloomy, terrifying laugh was just produced. Since there is a corpse, it could also be not a fierce ghost but a zombie; legend says that when a zombie is burned by fire it also emits a wail like an owl's cry. But I reconsidered: the laugh we just heard was a cold, sinister snicker, which a zombie probably could not produce. He *** must see clearly; if a ghost happened to shatter the palace's glazed roof, letting sunlight shine in to destroy its soul, even if we find nothing, we should still burn this strange set of clothes with a lighter to avoid future trouble.

Although the hall is dark, outside it is daytime; thinking of this, my courage grew a bit, and I edged another half meter forward on the main beam. This angle let me fully see the low‑hanging face of the female corpse in the shaman's robe: her face was deathly pale, not the pallor of a blood‑less corpse, but because she had applied heavy makeup, a thick layer of powder, her cheeks daubed with two large red rouge patches, and her red lips were tightly shut. The back of the shaman's robe hung from a rope, its top end just like those empty garments, oddly suspended from the wooden beam.

But from my position the corpse's head is still lowered at a steep angle, I cannot see her eyes. Just as I was about to prod the female corpse's head with my ice axe to lift it a bit for a clearer look, then set it on fire, I suddenly heard the corpse emit a burst of yin laughter toward me: 'hehehe, heng heng heng, gegegege…', in the silent darkness that laugh made my blood feel like it was about to freeze.

Although I was prepared, I still jumped with fright, hastily stepped back, but unexpectedly lost my balance, my body swayed and I fell from the main beam; luckily I still had a rope attached to me, so I did not drop straight into the mercury‑filled hall.

But at the instant I fell from above, seeing the light tremble on the mercury, a thought suddenly sprang to mind: the rear hall of the Soaring Clouds Heavenly Palace is full of oddities, especially this sudden mercury mechanism; although the exit is blocked, the palace's upper structure could easily let one escape alive even without explosives—what then is the purpose of this mechanism? Could it not be to deal with intruders, but to use vast amounts of mercury to bury a secret hidden in this rear hall, a secret that must never see the light?